2021-10-14 BC – Pandemic in British Columbia

Mitigation Measures

Dr. H announced new restrictions for Northern Health, which is kind of in the shitter:

Indoor personal gatherings are limited to your household plus 5 visitors or one other household, and all must be fully vaxxed.
Outdoor personal gatherings are limited to 50 fully vaxxed people.

A COVID-19 safety plan is required for:

Other things that came up at the press briefing:

They are holding the line on LTCH vax, anybody who hasn’t gotten a vax yet is not working. 96% got vaxxed.
The Oct 26 vax date is coming up for acute care, and they are totes serious about that deadline too.
58 people have recently been airlifted from NH to southern HAs.
By comparison, NH has 40 base ICU beds and 20? surge beds.
Mixing vax is good, but people should take whatever vax they are offered, both mRNAs (which is what we are using now for both the main course of treatment and boosters) are fine.
It looks like Moderna is slightly more durable, especially for people with crappy immune systems. This is probably due to the higher dose.
We’ve been giving boosters the elderly in LTCH and people with crappy immune systems and we’re watching everybody else. We’re not seeing problems with waning in the general population (yet). A longer dose interval seems like it has been A Good Thing.
There have been 89 cases at Willingdon Care Centre, roughly 70 residents and 20 staff. This has been one of the worst outbreaks. Ten people have died, and those haven’t all been reflected in the stats yet.
When asked if she’d promise to give people boosters to make mixed-vax people eligible to travel to the US, Dr. H declined by omission, but did say that it is a globally important question, and the US is working on it.